Bloodline(2)

The nation descended into chaos.

In DC, marines guarded the Capitol steps with machine guns while buildings were torched. Baltimore’s protests overwhelmed the National Guard. Paratroopers and artillerymen were called in. Cincinnati fell under siege, and Chicago’s West Side burned. Decades of festering tension, fueled by black poverty and racism and war resistance, exploded to the surface.

Getting mugged had been the final kick.

Let’s move to Lilydale. Deck’s words the night of the mugging were soothing, his face bright. He held me as I cried, releasing me only to clean my wounds. We’ll be sheltered there, safe from the world. Promise. You won’t believe how perfect it is.

I didn’t agree right away, not by a long shot, but then he mentioned preserving his life by avoiding the draft—his dad was the head of the county draft board and had the power to save Deck from Vietnam; he was also mayor of Lilydale, a postcard-perfect town as Deck described it, nestled two and a half hours northwest of Minneapolis—and what could I say?

I’m sitting on one leg as I grip Deck’s hand, perched in the Chevelle’s passenger seat, hurtling toward my new home, a place I’ve never been. My cat is curled on my lap, and with my free hand, I’m caressing the itchy stab wounds through my pantyhose. Leftovers from the mugging. They’re angry red scabs, halfway to healed. They weren’t deep, and if not for them, and for Deck’s reaction, the mugging would have already faded into the shadows of my mind. Why dwell on what you can’t change?

Deck was shocked, though, horrified, swore that strangers didn’t assault women in his hometown. Lilydale was peaceful, friendly. Everyone knew everyone, looked out for one another. The world outside might scream and swirl like a tornado, but Lilydale floated in a bubble, outside of time, as safe as a smile. The town even had a newspaper, Deck said. The Lilydale Gazette. I might finally get my byline.

Yes, I said, finally convinced. Yes, please.

It wasn’t just the byline. After a childhood of moving from one city to another, the idea of settling down with Deck, of belonging, well, it suddenly sounded all right. We packed up our tiny apartment within days, and here we are, humming along the road to a new life. The skyscrapers and stores of Minneapolis almost immediately gave way to lonely swaths of prairie, only the occasional farm to give scale to the emptiness.

I’ve never lived outside a city. Driven through the countryside, to be sure, but never with the intention of making it my home.

The specter of permanence makes the landscape as welcoming as the moon.

I squash that thought, rubbing one of the wounds so hard the scab cracks, leaking crayon-red blood into my pantyhose.

I chose this.

Deck’s tapping his fingers along to “I Can See for Miles.” The radio’s been blotchy the last half an hour, but the music is clear as water now. I wish it weren’t. The Who unsettle me. They’re all sneaky drums and sharp guitar. Particularly this song. It’s too near the bone because I truly can see for miles. There’s not a building in sight, not even a barn, just the forever grass.

“Nowhere to hide,” I say, stroking Slow Henry, the cat purring in my lap.

Deck’s fingers freeze. “What?”

I grin and toss my head, but I’m seeing Frances. My mom. She’s bright-eyed in the memory, years before the cancer fishhooked her. We’re moving, maybe from Seattle to San Francisco? I can’t line them all up. Sometimes we didn’t stay long enough to enroll me in a school.

“I love this,” Mom’s saying as we pull into New Town, its skyline reminding me of a castle rampart.

“Seeing a city for the first time?” I ask. My hair’s in pigtails, so I’m younger than thirteen, the age that annoyance gave way to a warm fizzing when a boy strutted by. That buzz ignited a whole parade of changes. Hair brushed a hundred strokes before bed, until it gleamed, until I was as glossy as a horse, and no way was I going to hide that power in little-girl pigtails. Cheeks pinched and lips licked when I might be seen. My own strut, awkward and unnoticed.

Mom lights a cigarette. The gritty, elegant smell soothes me. Always has.

“Nah,” she says, taking a deep suck. “Not seeing a city.”

I’m studying her profile. I scored her nose. The rest of my features—brown eyes, brown hair, sharp cheekbones—must be from my dad, though I don’t remember what he looked like. I don’t even recall his name, though I bet she’d tell me if I asked. But what’d be the point? I’ve been told he was worthless, a petty criminal, and that was enough.

She blows out the smoke. I lean into it.

“Being in a big city is what I love. Those long, empty stretches of road between? No good. Nowhere to hide. Small towns are even worse. Might as well tattoo a bull’s-eye on your back. Give me tall buildings and a crowd of strangers any day of the week.”

Nowhere to hide.

My mother was given to drama. It grew worse right at the end. I wonder what Deck would have thought of her. We met two weeks after she died. I lean forward to nuzzle my face in Slow Henry’s lush Creamsicle fur. He smells like dust.

“Are we close?” I ask Deck.

“Close as a whisper,” he says, tipping his head toward the windshield. His fingers are tapping again.

I turn down the radio and squint. We passed through the last town ten miles back. It was little more than a cross street with a filling station. Ahead, black sentinel trees have popped up, swallowing the road, a thick forest of pine and oak as out of place as an overnight carnival on this flat plate of earth. There’s a sign, though, a billboard offering big, looping words.